Monday, May 18, 2009

The Torture Mentality, Part 2

Last week, I posted a set of pro-torture talking points sent to me by a persistent torture apologist, along with my responses. The talking points were extensive, by not comprehensive. There are plenty more to enumerate, but today I'd like to talk about the one favorite technique and the most frequent recourse of all torture apologists: the resort to theory over reality. The details of the apologies will vary (it wasn't torture, it saved lives, you would have done it too, it was only in the panicky aftermath of 9/11, it's kept us safe ever since, etc., etc.), but the one point apologists will always return to is The Ticking Bomb Theory of torture.

Why all this theory? Because the reality is so damning. Apologists hope that if they can get you to focus on a fantasy ("if you had to torture someone to save a city, would you do it?"), you'll overlook that the Bush administration tortured terror suspects not just in the panicky aftermath of 9/11, but for years afterward, and did so in significant part not to defuse ticking bombs, but rather to establish a nonexistent link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

Don't believe the three reports linked above that Bush and Cheney ordered torture not just to save others' lives, but to cover their own political asses? There's more. Yesterday, anonymous "senior intelligence officials" got Walter Pincus of the Washington Post to publish their self-serving claim that although the CIA had indeed questioned Abu Zubaidah and Kalid Sheik Mohammed about an Iraq/AQ connection, such questions were never asked while Zubaidah and KSM were actually being waterboarded. Liz Cheney, currently on tour to defend her father, cited these anonymous claims as proof that the then Vice President didn't use torture to create a nonexistent cause for war.

(BTW, ask yourself this. What is the Washington Post's value-add when it types up anonymous government assertions like these? Why doesn't the CIA just post them on its own website? Answer: if you were to read the same claim on the CIA's website, you'd immediately discount its value because you would recognize it as self-serving. When instead you read the claim as dutifully transmitted by a stenographer with the Washington Post, it seems more substantive because it's being presented, in theory, by the disinterested Fourth Estate. The government uses a complicit mainstream media to sanitize its propaganda much as drug dealers use corrupt banks to launder drug money.)

The CIA waterboarded Zubaydah and KSM 83 times and 183 times each. How likely do you think it is that over the course of 266 waterboarding sessions, the CIA never brought up its questions about an Iraq/al Qaeda connection? Who are you going to believe, anonymous intelligence officials and Liz Cheney, or your own lyin' common sense? And even if you believe the superficially self-serving story of these anonymous intelligence officials, which way does their story cut? Torture is effective at producing false confessions not just because of pain, but because of the *fear* of pain. So someone who's being waterboarded six times a day for a solid month, as KSM was, will spew out anything he can imagine to get the torture to stop not just while he's actually being waterboarded, but also in between sessions, when he's trying to forestall the next trip to the drowning rack.

So don't go for the head fake: what matters here isn't the anonymous officials' claim that Zubaydah and KSM weren't asked about an Iraq/AQ connection while they were actually being waterboarded. What matters is that the anonymous officials have admitted that Zubaydah and KSM were being asked about an Iraq/AQ connection at all. Anything we got from these two is tainted, whether it was produced during torture sessions or in between them.

(And by the way, there's another head fake in there: the implication that if Zubaydah and KSM weren't waterboarded while being asked about Iraq and AQ, they weren't tortured while being asked. Waterboarding is far from the only torture technique permitted in secret Justice Department memos. So the anonymous officials irrelevant claim that Zubaydah and KSM weren't simultaneously waterboarded while being asked about Iraq and AQ doesn't even mean the two weren't tortured in other ways while being asked).

So get ready for the next talking point in the apologists' arsenal: "Okay, sure, they were also asked about Iraq and al Qaeda, but since we were torturing them anyway, why not throw in a few other questions, too?"

5 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Thanks Barry,it has been my assertion that the torture was intended to force the victims to "confess" to statments created for them, much like the police and rubber hose tactics. It is to me the only explaination for the excessive and repeated application of waterboarding,as well as the other tactics used, that is what my "lying common sense " tells meJPB

This whole torture issue is just plain sick. Sorry, in my view there's really no other word for it.

It's a bestial crime and all officials connected to the process (the actual torturers, their superiors, the justifying legal 'advisors' and the hypocritical politicians ordering the vindication on behalf of their own seedy agenda should answer in court for it. From G.W. Bush downwards to the last thug covering his ass with the Justice Departments worthless courtesy opinion on mortal agony not being torture.

These people hijacked their own constitution, befouled its values, lied to their own people and actually have the temerity now to wash themselves of all guilt. What a bunch of pathetic hypocrites!

I'd suggest subjecting these people to their own 'not-torture' if it's weren't such a dirty, lowly business. Would certainly be interesting to get a second opinion on the matter afterwards...

My Website

Follow by Feed

Follow by Email

Welcome

There are a lot of terrific blogs out there on the world of writing, but Heart of the Matter isn't one of them. HOTM primarily covers politics, language as it influences politics, and politics as an exercise in branding and marketing, with the occasional post on some miscellaneous subject that catches my attention.

HOTM has a comments section. Sounds simple enough, but as even a cursory glance at the comments of most political blogs will show, many people would benefit from some guidelines. Here are a few I hope will help.

1. The most important guideline when it comes to argument is the golden rule. If someone were addressing your point, what tone, what overall approach would you find persuasive and want her to use? Whatever that is, do it yourself. If you find this simple guideline difficult, I'll explain it slightly differently in #2.

2. Argue for persuasion, not masturbation. If you follow the golden rule above, it's because you're trying to persuade someone. If you instead choose sarcasm and other insults, you can't be trying to persuade (have you ever seen someone's opinion changed by an insult?). If you're not trying to persuade, what you're doing instead is stroking yourself. Now, stroking yourself is fine in private, but I think we can all agree it's a pretty pathetic to do so in public. So unless you like to come across as pathetic, argue to persuade.

3. Compared to the two above, this is just commentary, but: no one cares about your opinion (or mine, for that matter). It would be awesome to be so impressive that we could sway people to our way of thinking just by declaiming our thoughts, but probably most of us lack such gravitas. Luckily, there's something even better: evidence, logic, and argument. Think about it: when was the last time someone persuaded you of the rightness of his opinion just by declaring what it was? Probably it was the same time someone changed your mind with an insult, right? And like insults, naked declarations of opinion, because they can't persuade, are fundamentally masturbatory. And masturbation, again, is not a very polite thing to do on a blog.

Argue with others the way you'd like them to argue with you. Argue with intent to persuade. Argue with evidence and logic. That shouldn't be so hard, should it? Let's give it a try.